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"The challenges that young people are mobilizing against oppressive societies all over the globe are being met with a state-sponsored violence that is about more than police brutality. This is especially clear in the United States, given its transformation from a social state to a warfare state, from a state that once embraced a semblance of the social contract to one that no longer has a language for justice, community and solidarity - a state in which the bonds of fear and commodification have replaced the bonds of civic responsibility and democratic vision."

-- Henry Giroux

News and Opinion

Human Rights Watch Details NYPD Attack on Peaceful Protesters

New York police deliberately assaulted dozens of peaceful protesters, medics, and legal observers in one of this summer’s most violently repressed protests, trapping people in the streets past a city-imposed curfew before beating and arresting them in what Police Commissioner Dermot Shea described as “a plan which was executed nearly flawlessly.” At least 236 people were arrested at the June 4 protest in the Mott Haven neighborhood of the Bronx, and at least 61 were injured by police, with some left with broken noses and fingers, lost teeth, and potential nerve damage, according to a detailed report released on Wednesday by Human Rights Watch. “The police response to the peaceful Mott Haven protest was intentional, planned, and unjustified,” the report concluded. “The protest was peaceful until the police responded with violence.”

More than 100 protesters have filed notice of their intent to sue the city over police actions that day, which are likely to cost the city millions in misconduct settlements and legal fees. The protest, one of hundreds that followed the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, came after New York Mayor Bill de Blasio declared an 8 p.m. curfew following looting in other parts of the city. Most people arrested in the Bronx were charged with curfew violations or unlawful assembly. Many were held overnight with no food, including several who were injured and received no medical attention. The majority of the charges have since been dismissed.

Human Rights Watch’s reconstruction of the events, based on about 100 interviews and the review of 155 videos by participants and bystanders, reveals that about 10 minutes before curfew, police deliberately corralled protesters using a controversial law enforcement tactic known as “kettling,” preventing people from dispersing. When the curfew kicked in, police moved into the trapped crowd, shoving people to the ground, pepper-spraying them, beating them with batons from the top of parked cars, and violently arresting dozens of them.

Police also detained several medics and legal observers, despite them having been declared exempt from the curfew by the mayor’s office. Police on the scene were supervised by two-dozen senior officers in white shirts, including the highest-ranking uniformed officer in the department, Chief of Police Terence Monahan, who can be seen in one video confronting one of the protest’s organizers. Monahan also played a key role in the police repression of a 2004 protest at the Republican National Convention, during which police similarly kettled and assaulted protesters, ultimately costing the city $36 million in misconduct settlements.

“This was just a completely unjustified, unnecessary, excessive use of force and brutal crackdown on peaceful protesters,” Ida Sawyer, acting crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch and a co-author of the report, told The Intercept. Monahan’s presence, she said, “really showed how the violence and abuse is encouraged and condoned by the NYPD and how the system really fuels impunity.”

“If the top brass is leading this, then what message does that send to all of the officers below him?” she added. “It really just epitomizes how police officers are rewarded for abuse.”

Black residents nearly four times as likely to be cited by Los Angeles police, report finds

A report released on Wednesday by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights analyzed low-level infractions in California between 2017 and 2019 and found that LAPD and police agencies across the state disproportionately target Black residents. The advocacy group collected data on the most minor municipal offenses and tickets (outside of traffic citations) – including standing or sleeping outside, owning a dog without a proper license, jaywalking and entering a park after dark – and found a pattern of severe racial disparities in major cities and regions throughout the state.

Key findings include:

• Overall, Black residents in California are 9.7 times more likely to receive a citation for local infractions than white residents in their jurisdictions, and Latinx residents were 5.8 times more likely to be cited than their white neighbors.

• Black residents in LA were 3.8 times more likely to be cited for minor infractions compared with white residents, accounting for 30% of all low-level infractions.

• Despite being only 7% of the adult population, Black Angelenos accounted for 27% of “drinking in public infractions”, 33% of “sleeping or sitting” loitering tickets; and 63% of “loitering while standing” citations.

• There were similar patterns of disparate treatment of Black residents in liberal and more conservative regions of the state, including in the Bay Area, the Central Valley, Kern county, San Diego and other municipalities.

The report comes amid growing scrutiny of police violence and harassment, with advocates arguing that the enforcement of these offenses can lead to brutal and even deadly interactions with officers. The citations also disproportionately target unhoused people, and can lead to devastating fines and debts that can escalate to warrants, arrests and jail time.

The analysis suggests that in some neighborhoods and communities, “it’s illegal to be Black in public”, said Elisa Della-Piana, legal director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights (LCCR) of the San Francisco Bay area, and co-author of the report. “It causes lasting trauma, especially to be stopped repeatedly by police when you were doing nothing wrong, as is the case with ‘loitering’ and ‘sleeping’.” People are regularly fined between $250 and $500 for these types of offenses, and the state currently has more than $10bn in uncollected infraction debts, meaning thousands of people could face arrest due to these minor violations, LCCR said. While some jurisdictions use these laws to target homeless residents, other municipalities enforce these ordinances as a way to collect revenue, according to the report.

Release Breonna Taylor grand jury files by Friday, state attorney general told

Kentucky’s attorney general has been given until noon on Friday to release the secret grand jury proceedings in the Breonna Taylor case, after a delay was sought by the official on Wednesday just as audio recordings were set to be released to the public. The office of the attorney general, Daniel Cameron, filed a motion on Wednesday morning asking for a week’s delay to enable the redaction of names and personal information.

A court in Louisville had been expected to release the audio recordings on Wednesday by noon but, after the request, a judge gave Cameron two more days. ...

Cameron acknowledged this week that his recommendation to the grand jury was that only one of the officers involved be indicted, and only for the wanton endangerment of Taylor’s neighbors. He did not recommend anyone be charged directly in the death of Taylor, a black 26-year-old emergency medical worker who died in a hail of police bullets fired by three white officers during a botched raid on her apartment in March, fueling nationwide protests against police brutality and structural racism in America. ...

Cameron, a Republican protege of the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, and the state’s first African American attorney general, has been criticized since announcing the grand jury’s indictment for not seeking charges against the officers for killing Taylor.

Cameron said the other two officers who fired their guns were justified because Taylor’s boyfriend had fired at them first. The boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, fired on what he said he thought were intruders. ... On Tuesday, Cameron told a local TV station that he did not recommend any charges against the two police officers who shot Taylor because the grand jury needed to make that decision on its own.

US intelligence sources discussed poisoning Julian Assange

Plans to poison or kidnap Julian Assange from the Ecuadorian embassy were discussed between sources in US intelligence and a private security firm that spied extensively on the WikiLeaks co-founder, a court has been told. Details of the alleged spying operation against Assange and anyone who visited him at the embassy were laid out on Wednesday at his extradition case, in evidence by a former employee of a Spanish security company, UC Global. ...

In the evidence, one of the witnesses said that UC Global started off with meagre contracts and in reality the only one at the beginning had been signed in October 2015 with the government of Ecuador in order to provide security for the daughters of the country’s president and its embassy in London.

However, they said this changed when Morales attended a security sector trade fair in Las Vegas, where he obtained a contract with Las Vegas Sands, a company owned by the US billionaire Sheldon Adelson. The American was a friend and supporter of Donald Trump, who was a presidential candidate at the time.

Morales was said to have returned to the company’s offices in Jerez in the south of Spain and announced: “We will be playing in the big league.” The witness added that Morales said the company had switched over to what the latter described as “the dark side”. This allegedly involved cooperating with the US authorities, who Morales said would ensure that they obtained contracts all over the world. ...

The witness also claimed that the company’s US contacts had become nervous when it appeared Assange might be on the verge of securing a diplomatic passport from Ecuador in order to travel to a third state. On one occasion in 2017, they also recalled Morales saying that his American contacts had suggested that “more extreme measures” should be deployed against visitors to Assange. “There was a suggestion that the door of the embassy would be left open allowing people to enter from the outside and kidnap or poison Assange,” the court was told. The witness alleged Morales said these suggestions were under consideration with his contacts in the US.

Zach Carter: This Is THE MOST Unequal Recession In American History

As McConnell Dismisses New Covid Relief Bill as 'Political Stunt,' Survey Shows 60% of US Families Struggling to Get By

On the Senate floor Wednesday, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell indicated once again that he has no intention of providing badly-needed aid to struggling families across the U.S. even as new research found that nearly two-thirds of households with children are having trouble making ends meet.

McConnell dismissed the Democratic Party's latest version of the HEROES Act as a "political stunt," making it clear that like the bill which passed in the House in May—which has now languished in the Senate for 138 days—the $2.2 trillion relief package which House Democrats unveiled on Monday is not likely to reach the millions of families who need it.

"As always, his priorities are appalling," Vanita Gupta, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, tweeted, noting McConnell's determination to push through the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett—who has frequently ruled in favor of powerful corporations—to the U.S. Supreme Court.

McConnell's dismissal of the legislation—which includes a renewal of the $600-per-week enhanced unemployment benefits passed as part of the CARES Act in March, another round of $1,200 direct payments for most Americans, and aid for state and local governments—came amid the release of a new poll displaying the struggles of families across the country.

NPR, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health released the results of a survey taken in July and August of 3,400 adults including 1,000 with children at home, finding that 60% of respondents in the latter group have lost jobs or businesses or have otherwise had their incomes reduced since the coronavirus pandemic began in March.

Sixty-one percent of families reported having "serious financial problems" during the public health and economic crisis. Just over half of white families said they have been facing severe difficulties affording necessities like mortgages or rent, credit card bills, groceries, and medical expenses, while a higher share of people of color reported trouble making ends meet. Eight-six percent of Latino families and 66% of Black families said they are facing serious economic strife. 

Among the millions of American households where at least one person has contracted Covid-19—of which "essential workers" in the healthcare, retail, food, and other public-facing industries are especially at risk—the effects of the economic crisis are being felt even more acutely, according to the survey. Ninety-four percent of families in which someone has had the disease reported serious financial problems and 84% said they have faced reduced income. 

Researchers who conducted the survey expressed alarm that after the enhanced unemployment benefits and direct relief included in the CARES Act—relatively minor steps taken by the federal government compared to those taken in other wealthy countries, but ones that had a measurable, positive impact on poverty levels—families are still struggling to make ends meet as much as they are.

"The numbers of people in trouble, that is the shock," Dr. Robert Blendon, director of the study behind the poll and a professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, told the New York Times. "It's a very large number of people who can't pay the basics."

Economic Horror Show, THOUSANDS Face LAYOFFS, Unemployment Remains Historic

Religious group scrubs all references to Amy Coney Barrett from its website

A tiny religious organization tied to Amy Coney Barrett, Donald Trump’s supreme court nominee, sought to erase all mentions and photos of her from its website before she meets with lawmakers and faces questions at her Senate confirmation hearings. Barrett, a federal appeals judge, has declined to publicly discuss her decades-long affiliation with People of Praise, a Christian group that opposes abortion and holds that men are divinely ordained as the “head” of the family and faith. ...

A spokesman for the organization has declined to say whether the judge and her husband, Jesse Barrett, are members. But an analysis by the Associated Press shows that People of Praise erased numerous records from its website during the summer of 2017 that referred to Barrett and included photos of her and her family. At the time, Barrett was on Trump’s shortlist for the high court seat that eventually went to Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

Last week, when Barrett again emerged as a frontrunner for the court, more articles, blogposts and photos disappeared. After an AP reporter emailed the group’s spokesman on Wednesday about members of Jesse Barrett’s family, his mother’s name was deleted from the primary contact for the South Bend, Indiana, branch. All issues of the organization’s magazine, Vine and Branches, were also removed.

Nancy Pelosi Interview Proves Two-Party Political Theater!

Trump Panned Over Blatant Lie That He Made Insulin Cheap 'Like Water'

A coalition of progressive advocacy groups fighting to lower drug prices in the U.S. took President Donald Trump to task Wednesday for falsely claiming during the first 2020 general election debate that his administration made insulin "cheap like water," an assertion belied by the large sums Americans continue to pay for the lifesaving diabetes medicine.

"Like just about everything else he has said over the last five years, Donald Trump's claims on lowering drug prices in last night's debate, particularly his outrageous claim about insulin, were nothing but spin and lies," Margarida Jorge, campaign director for Lower Drug Prices Now, said in a statement.

"Calling insulin 'cheap as water' reveals just how out of touch this president is with the millions of Americans who must continue to ration critical medicines every single day because of Trump's failure to follow through on his promises to hold Big Pharma accountable and lower drug prices," Jorge continued. "Drug prices for Americans are the highest in the world, and three and a half years into Trump's presidency—in the middle of a pandemic—the prices have continued to go up faster than any other medical good or service."

During a discussion on healthcare at Tuesday night's presidential debate, Trump touted his administration's supposed success in lowering the costs of insulin and other prescription medicines.

"I'll give you an example: Insulin. it was destroying families, destroying people, the cost. I'm getting it for so cheap it's like water, you want to know the truth. So cheap," Trump said, remarks that were not met with any real-time pushback from Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden or debate moderator Chris Wallace.

STAT reported following the debate that contrary to Trump's claim, "insulin still retails for roughly $300 a vial," and "most patients with diabetes need two to three vials per month, and some can require much more."

In late July, Trump signed a series of executive orders that he touted as "historic" initiatives to lower the costs of prescription drugs, including insulin. But critics warned at the time that the orders were largely toothless and would provide little relief to the millions of Americans paying exorbitant costs for drugs that are far cheaper in other wealthy nations.

"While some of these proposals could help a limited number of people access insulin or EpiPens, they are pathetically small compared to the massive executive power Trump could use to make medicine affordable and available for all, if he were willing to stand up to Big Pharma," Peter Maybarduk, director of Public Citizen's Access to Medicines program, told the Los Angeles Times.

As PolitiFact noted late Tuesday, Trump's insulin executive order "targeted a select group of healthcare providers that represent fewer than 2% of the relevant outlets for insulin. Between 2017 and 2018, insulin prices for seniors rose."

Heh, I'd pay a dollar to see this woman debate Donald Trump about his fabulous pharmaceutical cost reduction program.

Oh my god, Katie Porter. pic.twitter.com/tO6B7xCx3G

— Public Citizen (@Public_Citizen) September 30, 2020

'How to move to Canada': Americans rush to Google after unwatchable debate

Following a debate derailed by interruptions, people speaking over each other, and insults hurled back and forth, Google reported a peak number of searches for “How to apply for Canadian citizenship” in the US.

Some people seemed in such a hurry to get out they couldn’t even get the name right: searches for “How to move to Canda” also spiked alongside the correct “How to move to Canada”.

Searches initially peaked about an hour into the debate, at about 10.30pm, according to the search engine. But it looks like the news unsettled people into the night – there has since been a second wave of searches on how to get Canadian citizenship – with most of the searches happening in the early hours of this morning.

The search was most popular in Massachusetts, followed by Washington and Michigan.

Everyone who watched that debate deserves $1,000 a month.

— Andrew Yang (@AndrewYang) September 30, 2020

Krystal Ball: The Ugly Truth Is That Trump Is As American As Apple Pie

Trump Campaign Looks to Make Good On Poll-Watching Threat in Philadelphia

The morning after President Donald Trump called for his supporters to “carefully watch” voting sites, his presidential campaign requested that Philadelphia immediately allow them to appoint poll watchers at early-voting centers. Early voting in Philadelphia began on Tuesday. The city opened six early-voting sites at new satellite election offices and another at City Hall where voters can register, request, fill out, and submit mail-in ballots. Unlike early-voting centers, traditional polling locations are only open on Election Day, and people can vote in person as opposed to delivering their mail ballots.

On Wednesday, at the weekly Philadelphia City Commissioners meeting, which is open for public comment, the Trump campaign’s Pennsylvania state director for Election Day operations, James Fitzpatrick, requested that the board allow the campaign to immediately appoint poll watchers at early-voting centers. ...

Officials do not respond directly to public comments at such meetings. Asked if the commissioners would allow the Trump campaign to appoint poll watchers, City Commissioner Lisa Deeley told reporters, “They are not polling locations. Poll watchers are only appointed at polling locations. … It is a temporary election office where services are made available to citizens who would like to register to vote or request their mail-in ballot, and they vote their mail ballot there, or they can take it home and vote on it at their dining-room table,” she said.

During the first presidential debate on Tuesday night, Trump made numerous false claims about mail-in voting fraud and said, “I am urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully.” He also referred to poll watchers in Philadelphia, claiming that watchers were barred from observing early voting, failing to note that the satellite election offices are not actual polling locations. “As you know today there was a big problem. In Philadelphia, they went into watch — they’re called poll watchers. A very safe, very nice thing. They were thrown out. They weren’t allowed to watch. You know why? ’Cause bad things happen in Philadelphia. Bad things.” Earlier in the day, Trump tweeted, “Wow. Won’t let Poll Watchers & Security into Philadelphia Voting Places. There is only one reason why. Corruption!!! Must have a fair Election.” ...

Tuesday’s debate was not the first time that Trump encouraged his supporters to go to polling sites in an attempt to intimidate voters, a form of voter suppression that goes back to before the civil rights era. He did the same in 2016, along with David Duke and leaders of white nationalist groups. In August, Trump told Fox News he would send sheriffs and other law enforcement to polling places on Election Day, which he likely does not have authority to do.

Jimmy Dore: Debate REACTION: Fauci, Masks, & Green New Deal!

What does the first climate question at a US debate in 20 years reveal?

The long-awaited climate question in last night’s presidential debate broke a 20-year silent streak from moderators on the crisis – thrusting it into prime time but also revealing just how stuck in the past much of the US is on the issue. After more than an hour of chaos as the candidates talked over each other, the Fox News anchor Chris Wallace asked Donald Trump: “What do you believe about the science of climate change and what will you do in the next four years to confront it?” ...

The debate could have focused on the starkly contrasted futures Americans must choose between – tackling the crisis that global leaders call the biggest ever threat to human rights, or fueling it. Instead, Wallace framed the existence of a human-made climate crisis as something that is for some Americans still debatable, asking Trump “What do you believe about the science of climate change” and “[Do] you believe that human pollution, gas, greenhouse gas emissions, contributes to the global warming of this planet”.

Trump fell back on his common refrain that he wants “crystal clean water and air”, argued we have “the lowest carbon” and said China, Russia and India send up “real dirt into the air”. Wallace pushed Trump to explain his views on climate science, asking if he believes human pollution contributes to global warming of the planet. “I think a lot of things do, but I think to an extent, yes,” Trump said. Despite that response, Trump refused to acknowledge the impacts of climate change, which include worse wildfires. And he said climate action would drive energy prices “through the sky”. ...

Wallace queried Biden on his climate plans, and the former vice-president spoke at length about his proposal. He said it would create “millions of good-paying jobs” and that the cost of inaction is more severe weather. He took a jab at Trump for suggesting dropping a nuclear weapon on hurricanes – which are intensifying because of the climate crisis. Biden said he does not support a Green New Deal – a vision for large-scale spending to fight the climate crisis and inequality that has become a buzzword for Republicans who see Democrats as radical.

Greenland's ice melting faster than at any time in past 12,000 years

Greenland’s ice is starting to melt faster than at any time in the past 12,000 years, research has shown, which will raise sea levels and could have a marked impact on ocean currents.

New measurements show the rate of melting matches any in the geological record for the Holocene period – defined as the period since the last ice age – and is likely to accelerate, according to a paper published in the journal Nature.

The increased loss of ice is likely to lead to sea level rises of between 2cm and 10cm by the end of the century from Greenland alone, according to the study.

Jason Briner, a professor of geology at the University of Buffalo and lead author of the paper, said: “We have altered our planet so much that the rates of ice sheet melt this century are on pace to be greater than anything we have seen under natural variability of the ice sheet over the past 12,000 years.”

These changes, over the relatively short period of less than a century, appear to be unprecedented. Greenland’s ice sheet shrank between 10,000 and 7,000 years ago, and has been slowly cumulating over the past 4,000 years. The current melting will reverse that pattern and within the next 1,000 years, if global heating continues, the vast ice sheet is likely to vanish altogether.

America's year of fire and tempests means climate crisis just got very real

In a flurry of recent fires and storms, the climate crisis has left unmistakable wounds on America. Even in a tumultuous year not short of anguish elsewhere, scientists warn the climate-fueled disasters of 2020’s summer point to major shifts that will upend Americans’ lives like no other threat. The American west has experienced its biggest year of fire on record, with blazes the collective size of Connecticut roaring across a tinderbox-dry landscape, consuming thousands of buildings, claiming several dozen lives and turning the Bay Area’s sky an eerie orange.

Meanwhile, the Atlantic has been so festooned with hurricanes – at one stage this month five storms were strung out across the ocean at once – that meteorologists exceeded their 21 English-language names for major storms and for only the second time had to turn to the Greek alphabet. Appropriately, the two phenomena met on 15 September, when wildfire smoke pouring across the country wafted into Paulette, yet another tropical storm, off the eastern seaboard.

Such events are consistent with a heating-up planet, according to scientists, with studies showing that hurricanes are becoming stronger as ocean waters warm up and the atmosphere holds more water vapor. In the west, prolonged, intense heat – perhaps the hottest atmospheric temperature ever recorded on Earth occurred in California in August – has dried out forests and soils, making them more susceptible to huge conflagrations. Add in the floods that have soaked swaths of the midwest and the Arctic sea ice that just shrank to its second lowest extent on record and it’s clear climate impacts are now piling upon America in multiples.

“The changes from greenhouse gas emissions on the Earth’s climate system ain’t pretty and they do not come alone,” said Camilo Mora, an environmental scientist at the University of Hawaii and lead author of research that found climatic extremes are causing 400 different types of impacts upon humanity. These threats are making people “unhealthy, thirsty, poor and homeless”, Mora said. “Climate change is like a horror movie with 400 endings to choose from.”

Also of Interest

Here are some articles of interest, some which defied fair-use abstraction.

Crumbling Case Against Assange Shows Weakness of “Hacking” Charges Related to Whistleblowing

Craig Murray: Your Man in the Public Gallery: Assange Hearing—Day 16

ASSANGE HEARING DAY SEVENTEEN—US Intel Spying on Assange Detailed in Court, Including Plans to Kidnap or Poison Him

Israel Is Sending Weapons to Azerbaijan as Fight With Armenia Continues

Neo-Fascist Proud Boys Exult Over Trump Telling Them to “Stand By,” Not Stand Down

Neanderthal genes increase risk of serious Covid-19, study claims

Two universities welcomed students on campus. Only one tested for Covid-19

DNI Letter Supports Allegation That Hillary Clinton Created 'Russiagate'

Jacinda Ardern admits cannabis use in heated New Zealand debate

Keiser Report | Alien Encounters with a Commercial Real Estate Crash

Krystal and Saagar: CNN Host SHOCKS Network By Admitting Hunter Biden Is A ‘Swamp Creature’

A Little Night Music

Little Willie Anderson - Big Fat Mama

Little Willie Anderson - West Side Baby

Little Willie Anderson - Late Night

Willie Anderson - Had A Dream

Little Willie Anderson - Looking for you baby

Little Willie Anderson - Lester Leaps In

Little Willie Anderson - Everything gonna be alright

Little Willie Anderson - Been Around

Little Willie Anderson - Come Here Mama

Little Willie Anderson - 69th Street Bounce